> For instance, what other fields use single greek characters to label concepts in a seemingly unpredictable arrangement?
This is a perfect example of what I was talking about. Greek letters are typically used in opposition to Latin ones in order to distinguish what programmers can think of as “type” of concepts. For example, when doing geometry, you might want to designate angles with Greek letters, and points or line segments with Latin ones. This makes it much easier to mentally keep track of what name correspond to which object.
Yes, learning Greek letters for the first time is some amount of initial overhead (not much, as typically used ones are similar to Latin anyway, nobody starts with psi or xi). However, crucially, this overhead is paid once, and pales compared to the difficulty of learning the concepts being represented in the first place. It is never the case that replacing Greek letters with Latin makes students go “oh thank you, now I understand everything!”, instead, things are typically just as hard as before. However, replacing Latin with Greek might actually do that, by reducing the mental overhead through introduction of categories (types) of objects.
This is a perfect example of what I was talking about. Greek letters are typically used in opposition to Latin ones in order to distinguish what programmers can think of as “type” of concepts. For example, when doing geometry, you might want to designate angles with Greek letters, and points or line segments with Latin ones. This makes it much easier to mentally keep track of what name correspond to which object.
Yes, learning Greek letters for the first time is some amount of initial overhead (not much, as typically used ones are similar to Latin anyway, nobody starts with psi or xi). However, crucially, this overhead is paid once, and pales compared to the difficulty of learning the concepts being represented in the first place. It is never the case that replacing Greek letters with Latin makes students go “oh thank you, now I understand everything!”, instead, things are typically just as hard as before. However, replacing Latin with Greek might actually do that, by reducing the mental overhead through introduction of categories (types) of objects.